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Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Delirial Utterances

By the time I receive my American citizenship sometimes this summer, as I hope, I will have spent a total of 20-some years of my life in the United States, divided over two separate yet quite significant periods. By now, I am as American as can be and no longer an outsider to the American culture and political system. When I speak out I do so out of genuine concern for America, Syria, and the world beyond. I critically embrace America’s values, I do believe in her natural right to pursue its interests, and I earnestly want to see her prosper. So there!

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are mere symptoms of an all too familiar malaise in democratic societies: political parties that have lost touch with their base. Until this malady treated, nothing will really change, except to the worse.

‪Presidents Obama and the Obamaphiles have paved the way for Donald Trump and the Trumpolytes. Fascist illiberalism is the child of amoral Realism.

By ignoring and failing to take strong stand against certain clearly racist attacks against Obama, the Republican establishment has greatly contributed to the Trump phenomenon.

A country like the United States of America cannot behave amorally no matter hard some of its leaders try. By virtue of its declared values and its history, especially over the last 100 years, its actions and policies can only be moral or immoral. By reneging on this, it was only natural for Obama’s Realism to lead to Illiberalism.

Trump’s fascism, and that of his supporters, is not as pronounced and ideological as it was at the time of Hitler and Mussolini. It’s much subtler, and both he and his supporters, seem to be unaware of it. That’s exactly why it is so dangerous.

As a sign of how blurred the lines have become between the extreme left represented by Bernie Sanders and the extreme right represented by Donald Trump, the appeal of both men to minority groups remains limited, and the policies proposed by both on foreign policy issues, especially the conflicts in Syria and Libya, are practically identical. Realism unites, but the surprising result is a betrayal of what America is about: practical idealism, or, if you will, moral realism.

Truce in Syria feels more like a Hoodna than a hudna. That is, it only applies to certain specific localities, often hoods and villages scattered throughout the country, than the entire country. And there will violations of course. The thing was designed to allow for violations under the mantle of fighting terrorism.

Go ahead, patronize me!

About Ammar

Ammar Abdulhamid is a Syrian-American author and pro-democracy activist based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to democracy promotion. His personal website and entries from his older blogs can be accessed here.

The Delirica

The Delirica is a companion blog to the Daily Digest of Global Delirium meant to highlight certain DDGD items by publishing them as separate posts. Also, the Delirica republishes articles by Ammar that appeared on other sites since 2016. Older articles can be found on Ammar's internet archive: Ammar.World